The Handy Islam Answer Book. John Renard
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of the most important Companions are those who, in the Sunni view, were Muhammad’s earliest successors in leadership—the first “caliphs.” Muhammad’s father-in-law Abu Bakr (d. 634) was chosen first. His first task was to bring back to the Islamic fold a number of Bedouin tribes for whom Muhammad’s death triggered a return to their ancestral ways. Already advanced in age, Abu Bakr was among the few to hold his rank who died of natural causes. Umar ibn al-Khattab succeeded Abu Bakr and ruled for about ten years (d. 644). Umar was especially noted for his firm administrative style and is perhaps most famous for wresting the city of Jerusalem from Byzantine control. (The Dome of the Rock is popularly but erroneously called “The Mosque of Umar.”) After Umar was killed, a council appointed Uthman ibn Affan, a member of the Quraysh family, and he administered the growing Islamic sphere of influence until he was murdered in 656. During the twenty-four years following Muhammad’s death, the caliphs administered from the city of Medina, but that would soon change.
How did Ali’s life end?
Ironically, it was a dissident who had originally been among Ali’s Shia who would murder this fourth and last of the “Rightly Guided” caliphs, thus effectively ending the Islamic analog to Christianity’s “apostolic age.” Lest anyone be shocked at the sanguinary nature of some of these early events, it may help to recall that Peter and Paul both died violent deaths as well. The immediate descendants of the Companions came to be known as the Followers (tabiun, taa-bee-OON), and their views on substantive issues rank next in authority. Together with the previous and succeeding generations (called the “Followers of the Followers”), they comprise the category of the “predecessors” (salaf, SA-laf). As in most traditional views of religious history, Muslims regard the time of Muhammad himself as the pinnacle after which all else is spiritual entropy.
How did Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali rise to prominence?
Muhammad’s cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib came to the fore definitively about twenty-four years after the Prophet’s death. His supporters, the “Shia” or “faction” of Ali now known collectively as Shi’i Muslims, would argue that the first three caliphs had been usurpers. At last, they believed, the man who should have been the first caliph could assume his rightful place. Ali’s stormy five-year tenure witnessed deepening fissures within the community and a heightened level of strife. Ali had built a base of support in the Iraqi garrison town of Kufa and so moved the capital there. Stiffest opposition came from Muawiya, the recently appointed governor of Damascus, who was a cousin of Uthman, the third caliph. Muawiya and his clan were convinced Ali had been complicit in the murder of Uthman and determined to avenge their kinsman’s death.
ISLAM IN THE CENTURY AFTER MUHAMMAD
What were the first great Muslim dynasties?
Relatives of Uthman, called the Umayyads, brought Ali down for his complicity in the murder of Uthman. They established a new seat of power in the ancient city of Damascus (Syria), thus inaugurating the first of a series of Muslim dynasties. Under the Umayyads the map of Islamdom expanded dramatically. By the year 711, Muslim armies had claimed ground across North Africa to Spain, and as far east as the Indus River in present-day Pakistan. Consolidation and some further expansion continued under the Abbasid dynasty, which ruled from its newly founded capital, Baghdad, after supplanting the Umayyads in 750. But the early plan for a single unified Islamic domain soon began to unravel. Increasingly aware that Baghdad could not continue to hold its far-flung empire together, regional governors and princes at the fringes began to declare independence. Although the Abbasid caliph would continue to claim nominal allegiance until 1258, the future belonged to countless successor states, from Spain to central and south Asia.
How did Islam spread under Mohammad’s immediate successors?
Muhammad’s immediate successors, called caliphs (KAY-liffs), inherited an expanding but loose-knit social fabric. The Prophet had united the Bedouin tribes under the banner of Islam, but tribal loyalties cooled quickly when the leader died. When Muslim elders in Medina chose Muhammad’s father-in-law, Abu Bakr, as the first caliph, the initial challenge was to regather the tribes already reverting to their pre-Islamic ways. Umar (reigned 634–644), the second caliph, then mobilized tribal forces to move northward into Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq), westward into Egypt, and eastward into Persia. Next, Umar instituted important policies in the conquered lands, allowing the subjected peoples to retain their religion and law, and levied taxes often lower than what had been paid previously to Byzantium and Persia. Muslim armies remained apart in garrisons that eventually became cities in their own right. Umar’s successors, Uthman (reigned 644–656) and Ali (reigned 656–661), compassed the downfall of the last Sasanian emperor but had to deal with disastrous internal strife as well.
Azem palace in Damascus, Syria, the city where the Umayyads established power in the mid-seventh century C.E.
How else did Islam develop and spread during those first decades after Muhammad’s death?
Very soon after the Prophet’s death, in 632, Muslim forces began to move out of the Arabian Peninsula effectively for the first time. After Abu Bakr managed to unite most of the Arab tribes under the banner of Islam, Umar spent much of his ten-year rule conquering the regions that now constitute the heart of the central Middle East. To the north, his forces ended the Byzantine domination of the Fertile Crescent, including Iraq, greater Syria, and the holy city of Jerusalem. Further to the west, Umar established garrisons in Egypt. And to the east, he made serious inroads into the realm of the Zoroastrian Sasanian dynasty of Persia. Umar was responsible for the initial establishment of the military and financial mechanisms that would form the basis of subsequent expansion. This included the practice of setting up garrison cities in the subjugated territories. Growing out of a policy designed to allow maximum self-determination of the subject populations, the use of garrison cities was meant to keep the conquering forces apart except when needed to keep order. Two ancient garrisons that went on to become important Iraqi cities, for example, are Kufa and Basra. Conquered peoples were allowed to continue practicing their ancestral faiths; the Muslims did not follow a policy of forced conversion. There is considerable evidence that Christian communities fed up with oppressive Byzantine rule cooperated broadly with the invading Muslims.
Was there steady progress under the early caliphs?
During the twelve-year tenure of Uthman, Muslim forces made further decisive gains against the Byzantine empire to the north as far as the Caucasus. To the west he expanded into what is now Libya and developed naval forces capable of challenging Byzantine control of the Mediterranean. He brought an end to the Sasanian empire and pushed the Eastern border of Islamdom well into Persia. At Uthman’s order, an official “standardized” written version of the Quran was produced. When Uthman was murdered in 656, the first of two disastrous civil wars that would mark the second half of the seventh century broke out. For the next five years or so, Ali fought a losing battle to establish his legitimacy as universal Muslim leader. His power base gradually eroded while that of his chief rival, Muawiya, grew to such an extent that Muawiya had himself proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem in 660. The following year Ali was murdered by a disaffected former supporter, Ali’s son Hasan capitulated to Muawiya, and the first of the great dynasties, the Umayyad, came to birth with its capital in Damascus.
Did Muslims found Damascus?
In the mid-seventh century, Damascus had already been inhabited for at least two mil-lennia. At the center of the region called Syria, Damascus had long been an important stop on north-south caravan routes originating all over Southwest Asia, also called the Middle or Near East. Stories of early Muslim origins provide accounts of trading jour neys to the environs of Damascus, including one in which a Christian monk recognized prophetic greatness in the boy Muhammad, who had traveled there with his relatives. During Old Testament times the city had figured in the political history of several major Near Eastern powers such as the kingdom of Aram, whose two-century rule of the region left the Semitic language of Aramaic as one of its legacies. During the early Christian era, Damascus figured prominently in the